My pal Andrew Whateley, who has died aged 71, was a gifted furnishings maker, and a real craftsman.
He was already an achieved woodworker by the point he left college and in 1969 he began an apprenticeship with the furnishings designer John Makepeace. After turning into Makepeace’s senior cabinetmaker in Warwickshire, Andy moved with him in 1976 to his new Faculty for Craftsmanship in Wooden at Parnham Home in Dorset.
The collaboration between designer and maker resulted in a number of necessary items of furnishings. The 1977 Mitre chair of ebony and silver nickel is on the quilt of Edward Lucie-Smith’s Furnishings, A Concise Historical past, revealed by Thames & Hudson in 1979. Landmark items additionally embrace the limed oak Liberty centenary eating desk (1975), and the Longleat four-hundredth anniversary desk (1980), crafted utilizing wooden from the Longleat property. This piece has Andrew’s signature because the maker alongside that of Makepeace because the designer.
After leaving Parnham to journey and work for a time in Australia, Andy returned to Britain within the early 80s to succeed Ron Lenthal because the cabinetmaker on the Royal Faculty of Artwork in London. As craftsman and adviser on working with wooden, Andy was liable for most of the very good one-off items made within the RCA furnishings division between 1982 and 1989.
Working with a scholar, he developed methods to create an progressive steam-bent plank chair. Refining the approach for his personal extra natural design, in 1987 he received an award from the Worshipful Firm of Furnishings Makers that allowed him to create two extremely progressive chairs within the “Windsor” custom from inexperienced quartersawn oak planks.
Andy actually needed to make his personal designs. A fee to make a field for the Georgian silver teaspoons within the RCA senior frequent room led to him designing and making a most stunning scallop shell field in fiddleback sycamore. It was a virtuoso piece of expertise.
Born in Stratford upon Avon right into a household of cabinetmakers and furnishings restorers, he was the son of Thelma (nee Webb), who labored for social companies, and Ernest Whateley. He grew up surrounded by wooden and furnishings made by his father, and Ernest taught and impressed his son from an early age. His loss of life when Andy was not but seven affected him significantly all through his life.
Andy was a quiet, type and considerate man. He beloved the pub, actual ale and cider, darts, skittles and dominoes. He taught and impressed in many individuals the love of working and creating in wooden.
In 1990 he moved to north Oxfordshire, hoping to arrange his personal workshop within the cottage he was painstakingly renovating. Till 1994, he labored for Andrew Varah close to Rugby, after which for numerous designers together with Ashley Cartwright and Suzanne Hodgson, however he suffered from unwell well being, together with persistent again ache, and was latterly unable to work.
He’s survived by his aunt, Babs, and a number of other cousins.
